Re: Portable Audio Recorder for Interviews?

All of the scenarios we ideally want to be able to use this portable recorder for will be the following:

1) We're just using it by itself. Just the interviewer/guest talking into the mic hooked up to the recorder. We'll then prep the audio to be listened to by our staff and members. These are the ones we usually do in house.

2) We're using it to record the audio while we shoot either because we don't want to use the camera's line in or onboard mic or we simply want to have a second audio source to compare with or transcribe from on top of the mics we've jacked into our cameras.

All of our on location interviews are like this except up until this point, we don't use any portable recorders. We just use all of our cameras and mics or the equipment of the ones commissioning the interviews. It varies depending on how far we're traveling and the location.

For the different equipment we own, we like everything to have its own set of mics and accessories so that no one has to wait for someone else to finish using something if they have another project to go off on, so we'd like to get a mic that will always be kept with the audio recorder.

So the recorder is the priority. If we have to just get a recorder and use the best mics for the job that we already have, fine. It's just a preference that we buy a mic with the recorder.

Syncing everything is a non-issue. Using a small portable recorder is just new to us because we're used to using our cams with mics lined in, our mobile studio, or being in-studio. We haven't really had something you can just pop out of your pocket and plug a mic into.

All of the pre and post work is covered. We just need a portable device to give us more options and lighten the load when we don't really need all of that other stuff for what we're trying to accomplish.

3) We're using it by itself with its built-in directional mics to record sounds from a static position for review, not to be synced up with any footage, just to have the audio used with b-roll or fun funny sound bytes or whatever. We only need it for this purpose for some of the weird performances (not music) and things we do.

That'll be the only three things we're using it for, numbers 1 and 2 being priority. I have a friend who owned a Zoom, but he moved so I never got a chance to play around with it.

Now we're in a situation where we need to be able to order something to test out for another interview we're doing and we have to just have it mailed there. It's just going to be backup at this point and we'll see how well it works sound quality wise, but we want to be sure that the hardware itself suits our needs in terms of formats and inputs before worrying about the quality of the recordings.

Hope that's sort of explained everything!